"Commissioners to Discuss 2010 Bond Issue Thursday"

Que wrote:

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If that train of thought prevails, I suppose JC will not have an issue with getting new mill levies and property taxes passed and paid.
Solvency are not the issue here, what is an issue: Paying your fair share is fine, however getting gouged by the local administrations for the sake of realizing their agendas is an issue that needs to be resolved by the taxpayers and voters.
Don't know how long you have lived in the area, however, most folks have experienced a huge property tax increase over the years. From an initial $700 per year, the taxes for the same property is now just under $2500. Add to that the $72 in 2010, plus %143 in 2012 and add more each year following.
People, especially those on Social Security, cannot afford the increases. Perhaps you are independently wealthy and it doesn't really matter. That is great.
I always hear "people on fixed income" can't keep up with the cost of living here. Well, I would say 99% of local residents are on some type of fixed income, i.e. Social Security, Military Retirement, private retirement, some sort of annuity, even income from your job, etc.;
Our taxes have increased several 100% in the past 20 or so years and the essential service have declined, although the fee's for such have also increased. I realize it is called inflation, I do believe JC and GC have exponentially surpassed many other areas in the country.

Do you really want the people to believe that 99% of the folks in JC are on fixed incomes?

That means 1% of the population hold real jobs. Come on Man.

I agree with Shawn. This increase in debt to the average household is very little. Less than a cheeseburger per week.

As far as people on fixed incomes I see alot of fixed income people around town walking, driving, shopping, golfing etc. and see no reason why they are not working a part time job if they need more money. I know that if I needed more money I would work for it. Lots of part time work available for those who want it. Be creative and you will find ways to make an extra buck.

"Fixed" can mean no raises, or raises just keeping up with inflation. As far as the rest of your silly post, property taxes have doubled or more in less than five years, with fewer city services. And the real increases are down the road. Wait until the mill levy starts jumping way up to pay for our debt. We are not here top take second and third jobs to pay for city officials' foolishness.

Help me wrote:

<quoted text>
Do you really want the people to believe that 99% of the folks in JC are on fixed incomes?
That means 1% of the population hold real jobs. Come on Man.
I agree with Shawn. This increase in debt to the average household is very little. Less than a cheeseburger per week.
As far as people on fixed incomes I see alot of fixed income people around town walking, driving, shopping, golfing etc. and see no reason why they are not working a part time job if they need more money. I know that if I needed more money I would work for it. Lots of part time work available for those who want it. Be creative and you will find ways to make an extra buck.

Please give your definition of "Fixed Income"

Even people that work for a living have fixed income unless they are lucky and get a raise every month or so.

Mohammed wrote:

When Junction City goes into Bankruptcy my Islamic Brothers will purchase Junction City where we can have an Islamic city in the heart of america. Junction City will be ruled by Islamic Law after we own the city and all of its property. The most difficult part of Islamic Law for Junction City to grasp is that there is no separation of church and state. The religion of Islam and the government are one. Islamic Law is controlled, ruled and regulated by the Islamic religion. The theocracy controls all public and private matters. Government, law and religion are one. There are varying degrees of this concept, but all law, government and civil authority rests upon it and it is a part of Islamic religion. There will be civil laws for Muslim and non-Muslim in Junction City. Shar'iah is only applicable to Muslims. You may have great difficulty with that concept. The U.S. Constitution (Bill of Rights) prohibits the government from "establishing a religion." The U.S. Supreme Court has concluded in numerous cases that the U.S. Government can't favour one religion over another. Islamic Law has many ideas, concepts, and information that can solve contemporary crime problems in Junction City.

This is kind of scary!

This is kind of scary!
Who is this person? How do we report this? It sounds like the same mindset as the shooter in Fort Hood. Fort Riley is a similar Military Base.

Que wrote:

<quoted text>
If that train of thought prevails, I suppose JC will not have an issue with getting new mill levies and property taxes passed and paid.
Solvency are not the issue here, what is an issue: Paying your fair share is fine, however getting gouged by the local administrations for the sake of realizing their agendas is an issue that needs to be resolved by the taxpayers and voters.
Don't know how long you have lived in the area, however, most folks have experienced a huge property tax increase over the years. From an initial $700 per year, the taxes for the same property is now just under $2500. Add to that the $72 in 2010, plus %143 in 2012 and add more each year following.
People, especially those on Social Security, cannot afford the increases. Perhaps you are independently wealthy and it doesn't really matter. That is great.
I always hear "people on fixed income" can't keep up with the cost of living here. Well, I would say 99% of local residents are on some type of fixed income, i.e. Social Security, Military Retirement, private retirement, some sort of annuity, even income from your job, etc.;
Our taxes have increased several 100% in the past 20 or so years and the essential service have declined, although the fee's for such have also increased. I realize it is called inflation, I do believe JC and GC have exponentially surpassed many other areas in the country.

No. I am not independently wealthy, it just seems to me that with all of the incessant b*(ching that takes place about the awful things that have been done by the commission that my taxes were going to go up quite a bit more then this. In fact, I was bracing myself for it. I would love to keep my money and use it for things that I deem important to me, but 5 - 10 dollars per month is somehting that I will absorb with my limited income and move on. Of course I am in support of making sure that the commission and the city be more conservative with their spending from now on, but I really do not think this small amount of money is going to be the end of the world as we know it, regardless of how "fixed" your income may be.

Shawn wrote:

<quoted text>
No. I am not independently wealthy, it just seems to me that with all of the incessant b*(ching that takes place about the awful things that have been done by the commission that my taxes were going to go up quite a bit more then this. In fact, I was bracing myself for it. I would love to keep my money and use it for things that I deem important to me, but 5 - 10 dollars per month is somehting that I will absorb with my limited income and move on. Of course I am in support of making sure that the commission and the city be more conservative with their spending from now on, but I really do not think this small amount of money is going to be the end of the world as we know it, regardless of how "fixed" your income may be.

A principled position would be to support those that are concerned with the rising mill levies and property taxes, instead of saying "oh it's just 5 or 10 Dollars a month".

In the past 20 years those "5 or 10 Dollars a month amounted to just under 300% increase in property Tax.

Thanks for the kind words emanon they are appreciated.
I have held back from doing too many comments on this subject because the folks who can make the changes don't seem to want to. I am angry so I am going to attempt to answer some of the questions posed here.
Why should a person who worked all their life and finally was able to retire be forced to now go back to work due to the mismanagement of our tax dollars? The folks on fixed incomes are the very senior folks who have to make very serious decisions every day about their money. So telling them to go back to work part time to pay their property tax increase is not only callous but outrageous. They chopped a womans head of in France when she said "Let them eat cake when they are hungry". Lets look at this logically:
1. They draw Social Security lets guess $1300 per month for him and maybe $700.00 for her. That is about average from what I can determine. They probably have some savings and that may be their only income. From that they pay Medicare, House Insurance, Property Tax,(After inflated adjustments)Car Insurance, Car Property tax and tags, OH! yes I almost forgot they have to buy FOOD, GAS and things like that. I wonder how much of that fixed income is left over Mr. Scrooge? "Are there no work houses or prisons". THAT IS WHAT IS MEANT BY FIXED INCOME.
So each time the mil is raised even a little it affects these folks and there are many in this town. What is not realized is that this has always been a partial retiremnet community.
2. If the city and school debt continue to grow without sufficient revenues to make larger payments against that debt the interest on the debt eats up any and all city operating funds. After a while we no longer will be able able to afford even basic city functions. Reduction is police, fire, and safety folks is a serious issue. The school which is out of control as far as I am concerned will have to cut back on its programs and that usually means laying off teachers as they never lay off administrative folks.
3. I don't like being lied to by Mr. Barnes during the last budget meeting when he was asked to talk about the upcoming bonds coming due and he refused to acknowledge they existed and even went so far as to put the person down who asked about them.
4. I don't like being lied to by the school system. We were told when the city voted on the mil levy for the New Junior High that there would be sufficient monies budgeted for the old Junior High to be refurbished. WHERE IS THE DAMN TAX MONEY?????? Now they want 4 million dollars, based upon some "designer" needing to build a new school from the old one.
STOP THE LYING AND THE MANIPULATING!!!!!!!
Here is my question for the school board and our city government:::
How do you propose to increase revenues commensurate with the debt?
Your answers have been almost always raise the peoples property taxes. Maybe it is time to think outside the box and look at a dedicated sales tax whose revenues can only be used to pay down the debt "KEY WORD HERE IS ONLY".
I knew once I got started I was going to Rant and Rave. Folks nothing I say here needs to be taken personally. I have lived here since the mid 70's and I truly see the good that has happened since the bad old days. We the people have been given a bad deal by those who have made bad decisions with our tax money.
Well that is my ravings and you welcome to take your shots.

Travelingman, you have posted a BRILLIANT message.
I too am one of those you referred to in #1, and so many others in this city are also. I totally agree with you with the lying and maniuplating that is being done by our city officials, as well as the school board....it just has to STOP!!!

Good luck getting an answer to your question "How do you propose to increase revenues commensurate with the debt"? I think we are all waiting for that answer, which will never come from the ones who have taken down this road to corruption and debt. They did a good job of taking us there and know nothing about how to get us out~~

I say that we need to start drawing attention to this town and what is going on, on a bigger scale, we need to step outside of kansas and get national attention drawn to this corruption. If people start picketing the city hall meetings and the public officials, someone is going to pick up the story and run with it and that means outside investigators...I have seen smaller stories go big. Its time for we the people to think outside the box as long as this corruption stays IN JC, it will stay hidden and covered up. I believe that last thing our commissioners want is a story about them on the national news. It can be done, we just have to figure out a way to get it told outside of JC. just my thoughts.

Travelingman;

you voiced this issue very eloquently.

If it just would not fall on deaf ears.

I do think short of an uprising by the taxpayers nothing will get their attention.

Travelingman if it is any consolation I heard it the same way. The money left would take care of it all. Well then we have the opportunity with the old ALCO building since we got all this money and the Taxpayers are not too bright let's use some of the money since we need new stuff. There is a myriad of places that funds were used I am sure. What we nedd is a legal way to demand accountability

Too bad someone doesn't get 20/20, 48 hours, or 60 minutes involved in this. I bet that would open up some eyes.

Seems to me that the funding was already in place for the old middle school and again the school district is talking about raising the mill levy.

Who holds the school district accountable? Then on this mornings news they were talking about a shortfall in funding because more kids were on the free lunch program, that they were going to have to cut some of the activities away from the school and have more 6 games instead of 4 a night to help cut the budget.

Can't these people just pull the purse strings and "STOP" spending? Spend only what is necessary.

Travelingman....Thanks for the post. I had just not looked at it from that point of view. I have not been paying property taxes for that long, so I do not recall a time when my taxes were 300% less then what they are now. My initial post in this thread may have clued you in to my ignorance in regards to this subject. Thanks for your thoughts.

I heard that the school district is going to take over the operation of Spin city. I wonder if they can afford the $600,000.00 price tag for the parking lot

The school isn't asking for any more tax money for the old middle school. They already have it in the massive capital outlay fund we all pay into. Just a small fact, all school districts in Kansas start at 50 mils on the levy and get two levies to fund the schools. This amounts to over double what we pay for both the city and county operations. In other words we pay more to the school than the county and city.

Tom, I have to disagree with you as KJCK and the DU reported last week that the USD 475 was asking approval from the school board for a mil levy raise in order to fund a 4 million dollar upgrade of the old middle school. They were in the paper today crying about the lack of sufficient funds per student to offset costs because of the "free lunch program". In my mind the free lunch program is paid for from the state and federal funds provided to the school on a per student basis. From all I have read it is actually one of the mandates that is actually funded at the state and federal level.

I have an idea.......Maybe we should reduce the amount of overhead/administration at the Administration level to compensate for that shortfall. Maybe it is about time to let the schools have the cake for a change and not the non-teaching part of this school system.

I have another idea.....Several years ago, before the Alco building was a reality and right after the school bought the old Sprint building there was a pre-paid plan to upgrade the old middle school. Monies were allocated and all was good. Then USD 475 Empire buuilders decided the Alco building needed to be paid for....mil levy went up right after as the poor school system did not have enough money for the students and teachers so cuts would have to be made. So lets fire the "DESIGNER/ARCHITECT" DUST OF THE OLD PLAN AND FIX AND USE IT. I almost forgot the rest of my question????????? WHY DO YOU NEED MORE SCHOOL WHEN YOUR STUDENT ENROLLMENT IS DOWN????????

I guess I am trying to say that it is time to cease with the throwing of money at this school system without any fiscal accountability.

Do not tell me that each year an accounting comes out. The only one that can understand this conveluted mess is a certified public accountant. Transparency means clarity. Here is what is taken in per student...Here is what is spent on maintenance, salaries, school supplies, utilities etc. Then show a balance.....That is very simple but those who run the school system have figured out if you can't understand their bookkeeping method you can't challenge their management of our tax dollars.

It needs to stop....I have no problem supporting the school here but I do have a problem with supporting The Kingdom of USD 475!!!!!!!!!!

I stand corrected. Thank you. I am with you. I oppose anything that adds to the fat administration and wasteful spending in our school district. It amazes me that the college educated people that are suppsed experts built a school for non-driving students out on a State highway. I could list much more but it all falls back to little or no common sense in decision making with the obvious knowledge that we as taxpayers must keep paying no matter what. Watch for much more of this crap for years to come.

Just like the Devin Center, all these projects are designed to stroke massive egos.

Ron Walker makes over $11,000 a month (not including perks) but the staff that went back to school this summer waited seven weeks for a partial paycheck, and another four weeks for a full paycheck.
And they wonder why they can't keep employees. The turnover is killing them. Add in the once a month paychecks, who can wait months for a full check when they're taking an 10-12 dollar an hour position. The school district claims it would cost too much to pay biweekly. Who are they kidding?
On a side note, Walker has his house for sale. The asking price is about 35 times what the lowest paid employees in the district make a year.